Northpointe's Secret Algorithms, COMPAS, and the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence

"There’s software used across the country that predicts whether people are likely to commit a crime. It’s not quite Minority Report, but the same basic idea is behind it: The software assesses various data points about a person and then gives him or her a risk score; the higher the score, the more likely they are to commit a crime in the future. The scores are used by judges in a number of different jurisdictions for sentencing people convicted of crimes.

"Back in May ProPublica published an investigation into the risk-assessment software that found that the algorithms were racially biased. ProPublica looked at the scores given to white people and black people and then whether the predictions were correct (by looking at whether they actually committed or didn’t commit crimes); they found that in Broward County, Florida, which was using software from a company called Northpointe, black people were mislabeled with high scores and that white people were more likely to be mislabeled with low scores.

"This is obviously problematic, as a possible outcome is that judges will give longer sentences to black people based on an erroneous computer assessment of their risk. And that’s something a defendant named Eric Loomis seriously objects to. Northpointe’s software, called COMPAS, was used in his case in Wisconsin. All of these companies say the formulas used to come up with the scores are proprietary so defendants can’t find out why they were deemed low or high risk. Loomis decided to appeal, saying that the use of secret algorithms in the criminal justice system violates his right to due process."

Click HERE to read the rest of Chiel's article, then compare the above excerpts to the following passage from Chapter Two of my first book, Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form (TrineDay, 2012):

"The same year [i.e., 1974] Dr. [Jose] Delgado was
telling Congress that 'We need a program of psychosurgery for political control
of our society,' [...] Dr. Louis
Jolyon West was proposing just such a plan to the Governor of California,
Ronald Reagan. West hoped to create a
Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at an abandoned missile site in
the Santa MonicaMountains. He stated in print that young black males
were unusually violent and required special treatment."

According to Samuel Chavkin's 1978 book The Mind Stealers, Dr. West's Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence was to be established in order to:

"...develop 'behavioral indicators, profiles, biological correlates,' to assist 'school administrators, law enforcement personnel and governmental departments' to detect and control 'overt expression of life-threatening behavior by identifiable individuals and groups' [...]. Many critics of Dr. West's proposal were up in arms over the fact that two junior high schools would provide much of the source material for the investigation into the genetic factors which predisposed violence, 'one in a predominantly black ethnic area; the other in a predominantly Chicano area.' One of the most persistent critics of the center proposed by Dr. West was Dr. Isidore Ziferstein, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. 'We have a new situation on our hands,' Dr. Ziferstein said. 'Because of the intensifying economic decline it is inevitable that more and more jobless will go beyond the limits of the law to satisfy their needs. There are probably upwards of 30 percent of our population who are permanently impoverished ... And once these 30 percent become convinced that the democratic process is not working for them, they become desperate and may resort to violent means. There is a rising radicalism in their midst and there is an uppitiness among the blacks and the Chicano prisoners which prison officials find intolerable. To subdue them, the authorities are using new methods. They're employing the psychiatric armamentarium and a new technological tool set -- what has come to be known as psycho-technology. Under the guise of therapeutic behavior modification they're applying anything from Anectine and other aversive drugs to psychosurgery.' For the first time in the history of the United States, criteria were to be set up for the labeling of individuals believed to be potentially criminal, even though they had committed no crime ... those to be drawn upon for experimentation would be children, minority group members, and prisoners. Dr. Ziferstein scorned the idea of 'predicting' which people are potentially violent. 'This means labeling persons as potential criminals, and involves a serious threat to civil liberties.'"

Dr. West may have died in January of 1999, but apparently his perverse dream has morphed and lives on in a different form for a brand new century. Political researcher Alex Constantine (author of Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., among other valuable books) sheds further lights on Dr. West's Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence in his 4-24-13 Constantine Report post entitled "Fascists in White Coats: The CIA's Dr. Louis Jolyon West & the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute," which you can read by clicking right HERE.

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About Me

I'm the author of CRYPTOSCATOLOGY: CONSPIRACY THEORY AS ART FORM (TrineDay, 2012) as well as SPIES & SAUCERS, a collection of three novellas (available from PS Publishing at: http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/spies-and-saucers-jhc-robert-guffey-2158-p.asp), and CHAMELEO: A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF INVISIBLE SPIES, HEROIN ADDICTION, AND HOMELAND SECURITY (available from OR Books at: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/chameleo/). My most recent book is UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES (available from Night Shade Books at: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/book/until-the-last-dog-dies/#.Wf-RnIhrzcs). If you would like to buy a signed copy of CRYPTOSCATOLOGY, simply click on the button below.